There are two shows that I watch on YouTube without fail: food challenges by Epicurious that force a professional chef and a home cook to swap ingredients and cook the same meal, and straight line missions by GeoWizard. Other things pop into rotation, too, like painting tutorials and, earlier this year, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:my first D&D actual play. But these two channels are the only ones that can persuade me to like♛, subscribe, and hit that little bell to get notified of new uploads.
We’re not here to talk about a $300 bowl of ramen today, so takes the centre stage.𒈔 This brummy adventurer, real name Tom Davies, has attempted to cross numerous countries in a completely straight line. Using a GPS to follow his line, he has faced off against Wales, Wales again, Scotland, Wales a third time, Norway, the Isle of Man, and England. I think there was a fourth Wales mission in there at some point, too. As I write this article, he’s in the middle of uploading his second attempt at crossing Scotland. The man is incorrigible.
I’m nowhere near navigationally astute enough or fit enough (see my unfortunate attempt at walking the length of H🐭adrian’s Walღl for evidence of that) to complete a real🐼-life straight line mission. But I am a gamer. And what is Death Stranding if not a walking simulator where your greatest foe is the terrain itself? Oh yeah, and the chthonic s🃏quid creatures.
Preparing The Mission
Due to the fact that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I don’t own a PlayStation 5, and therefore can’t play Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, I decided to jump back into Kojima’s original Deliveroo simulator in order t๊o set myself a new challenge. But first, I needed some ground rules.
I loaded an old save, when I’d barely explored the Central Region. Sam was tasked with bringing a robot to the Distribution Center South of Lake Knot City. This mission has a few things going for it. Firstly, it’s a fair walk. I don’t want this challenge to be too easy, and I want to encounter a range of environmental hazards. Secondly, most of the map isn’t connected to the Chiral Network at this point, meaning that I can’t🐷 just use other players’ structures to progress. Finally, the straight line I’m going to be following passes over several crevasses, rivers, and directly through two Mule encampments. This wasn’t going to be easy. But that’s 𒆙never stopped GeoWizard.
Mules take on the role of farmers in a real-life mission. GeoWizard’s exploits have been hindered on multiple occasions by angry landowners and, while none of them are armed with electrified poles, they are probably his most dangerous obstacle. That’s thanks to careful planning of his route. Davies spends days, weeks, even months planning his trips to ensure his line doesn’t go through impassable terrain (lake🐷s and mountains don’t count as impassable for the most part) and sets himself up🌞 for success. I don’t have that luxury, as my precise start and end points are predetermined by the order I’m delivering. No matter, I’m up for the challenge.
The final, and arguably most important, point of discussio𝔍n is how to measure my success (or failure). Davies’ GPS tracks exactly how many metres he has strayed from his line, ultimately giving him a platinum score if he remained within 25m at all times, gold if he stayed within 50m, silver within 75m, and bronze for not surpassing an 100m deviation. He also utilises something called a Burdell score, which average♒s all his deviations in order to give a more accurate representation of the mission.
You can’t apply the Burdell score to a virtual straight line mission, however. So I’m taking one simple stat from the results screen: how far I travel compaꩲred to the quickest route. This is shown as a multiplication. For instance, meandering for 4km on a 2km route would give you a score of 2x. We want as close a score to 1x as possible.
Some final notes: the cargo must arrive undamaged, and I can take as many tools with me as I can reasonably carry. Of course, in this game, carrying more tools makes walking more difficult, so it’s a trade off. I’m not going to use any vehicles – that goes against the spirit of the whole 𒁏idea – but I can use other players’ tools if they happen to appear on the line. With all the preparation out of the way, let’s get to the misꦦsion itself.
Crossing America In A Completely Straight Line
Well, Some Of It
My mission got off to a terrible start. Due to the layout of Lake Knot City and its impassable boundaries, I had to immediately meander off-line in order to even start my mission. I don’t know whether the game counts this as a part of the order or not,🤡 so it’s hard to tell how 🔥badly it impacted my final score, but if I had more control over the scoring, I’d start the mission outside of the Lake Knot City compound.
After that initial annoyance, however, things ran smoothly. The game’s UI overlaid my line on the overworld in front of me, and I followed diligently. I clambered over rocks I would usually have skirted around, I waded through deep rivers as BB wailed in protest, and I comp﷽letely avoided any of the Mules from the first encampment. I was skirting the edges – but well within the boundaries of – their territory, which migh🍰t have saved my bacon.
Next, I faced my biggest environmental obstacle, a deep crevasse that runs like a wound through the Central Region with a fast-flowing river at the bottom. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t really scouted the map ahead of time, so I’d just brought my standard gear along with me. Two ladders, two climbing anchors, a PCC, and a range of weapons for facing BTs or other humans in my path. I knew this was packing light, so I saved my gear and managed to stumble into the depths of the fissure without strayiꦅng too far from the line or falling over. I similarly powered through the river, but had to use both of my ladders to ascend on the other side.
This was my fi♔rst major error of the run. Had I checked the map, I would have seen that theꦯre was another player’s climbing anchor positioned a little further along the line. I could have deviated north instead of south (which was required to use my ladders) and saved my gear. No matter. Onto the next one.
The line then took me through the second Mule encampment, and t🌼his one ventured dangerously close to the main hub. With nowhere to hide and no ability to counter beacon scans at this point in the game, I was spotted immediately. As I saw the truck full of villains approach, I did the only thing I thought possible to save my mission. I ran.
I ran a🅘s fast as I could, following my line pretty much perfectly. I had a couple of slight deviations to avoid electrical staves that were thrown perfectly onto my line, but they were a metre at most. One Mule caught up with me and landed a blow on my back, which staggered me. But I quickly regained my balance and noticed that the only item I’d lost was one of my climbing anchors. Had that been a crucial delivery item, it could have spelled doom for my mission as I’d have needed to circle back and collect it, putting me in the midst of the encroaching Mules꧋.
My cowardice paid off, but would the loss of a crucial climbing anchor come back to haunt me? My ladderlessness quickly caught up with me a📖s I had to cross a narrow but fast-flowing mountain stream with the Mules in hot pursuit. I opted for my riskiest manoeuvre yet and jumped across. I moved about five metres off-line in order to find the best jumping spot, and managed to scramble up the other side.
Mules thankfully reduced to yellow warnings on my UI, I took a second to catch my breath before setting off again. I kept my pace slow to conserve my energy and to avoid slipping on the looཧse scree beneath my feet. However, my backpack was significantly 🙈lighter now, sans three crucial survival items, so I needn’t have bothered.
My final obstacle was a sheer cliff face. I don’t think there was any way I could have prepared for this. Maybe a series of three or four ladders would have taken me precariously up its perpendicular angle, but I equally may have fallen and crushed my all-important luggage as I attempted it. Luckily, I could skirt around the bottom of the mountain without too much deviation. It was my biggest separation from the line thus far (no🌳t counting South Lake City), but I’d wager it was ten to 15 metres at its widest. After all I’d been through, I was happy to take the safe option so close to the finish line.
I rejoined the line and used my last climbing anchor to make it down a small cliff. However, I then faced a sಞimilar problem to the one I started with. The line on the map goes straight to the terminal in the Distribution Center, but I needed to circle around to the entrance before descending to the underground bunker. Unfortunately, this unavoidable inconsis🔯tency was my biggest deviation of the whole mission. Despite this final annoyance, I was proud to have made the trip at all. But how did I score?
The Results
Thankfully, all three pieces of equipment I was transporting arrived safe and sound, with just one percent of damage to each, likely from my stumble after being swiped by an unruly Mule. My route score? 1.11x, an almighty impressive feat that would undoubtedly be even lower were it not for the final farting about at the Distribution Center itself. If I could draw – and score, I know you can plot routes on the map, but you can’t score them – my own line to꧂ the entrance of the Center, then I’d likely have an even better score.
All things considered, I count t🗹his as a platinum run, an exemplary effort of endurance. Next time (and there will be a next time) I’ll try a more topographically difficult route – maybe up the mountain to the Junk Dealer’s abode. I’ll also study the route more closely, in order to better prepare the equipment I think I’ll need instead of hoping for the best. While I avoided BTs this time around, I’ll be sure to check the🍃 weather next time as well in case of heavy rain.
A straight line mission in Death Stranding is an interesting experiment. This game encourages you to take the path of least resistance. Skirt around mountains. Build over crevasses. But refusing to abide by the core premise of the game actually 🅺forces you to engage with its core mechanics – those of balance, resourcefulness, and shrewdly utilising your equipment. You forge a deep relationship with the topography in this direct approach, too, giving you a greater appreciation for the game൲’s attention to detail and the immersion that brings.
Most of all, however, this was fun. Like applying Nuzlocke rules to a Pokemon game, completing Death Stranding orders in a perfectly straight line adds a whole new dimension to the game, forcing you to rethink everything you thought you knew. One day, I want to complete a straight line mission across the whole of America, or maybe even Australia. It will take some time to work out exactly how to make that possible. Completing every order in as straight a line as possible is probably the play, despi🦄te the fact that you will still zigzag 🐻across the country. Until someone works out how to apply the Burdell score to a virtual GPS across a fictionalised map of the U.S., that’ll have to be good enough. Let me tell you, it’s good enough for me.
꧙ I Met The Devil And Got A Glimpse Of Death Strಌanding 2
Sometimes visiting central London is hell, but this takes it to a new leve♐l.
